About

Photo by Stephen Locke

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, a writer, teacher, and facilitator who explores how the spoken, written and sung word can help us live more meaningful and vibrant lives. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, where she teaches, Caryn is the author or editor of over 20 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, non-fiction, and anthologies. A registered songwriter with BMI, her poetry and prose has been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies. She blogs at this site and at Huffington Post. Caryn’s long-time callings include writing as a spiritual and ecological path, yoga, cultivating a loving family and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives

Give Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg a few key words plucked from the audience, and she can create and read out a new poem in moments. She’s a jazz bop artist of the word. And her Transformative Language Arts program [at Goddard College] is just what the doctor ordered for a mad, mad world. ~ Kevin Rabas, 2017-19 Kansas Poet Laureate

As a beloved workshop facilitator, she has led workshops since 1992 for adults in transition, people living with serious illness, intergenerational groups, ecological groups, teens, and multi-cultural communities. She offers writing and singing retreats and performances with singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt through their business, Brave Voice. With her husband, Ken Lassman, Caryn presents trainings and facilitates meetings for community groups, cooperatives, and businesses. She also offers writing and right livelihood coaching, and with Laura Packer, will be teaching the Transformative Language Art Network's Right Livelihood Professional Training in 2018.

Just another prairie burning

Caryn was born in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up there as well as in Manalapan, NJ until she headed west to study journalism at the University of Missouri, where she studied labor degree instead. She continued west on I-70 to Kansas City, then Lawrence, Kansas, where she fell in love with the land and community. Caryn received her Ph.D. and MA from the University of Kansas (poetry, women's studies, mythology), and she is trained in grassroots organizing from the Midwest Academy, poetry therapy from the National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, group process and facilitation through the bioregional movement, and in teaching yoga and Curvy Yoga. She is the recipient of Kansas Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Rocky Mountain National Park artist-in-residency, the City of Lawrence Phoenix Award, and other honors.

Caryn lives in the country, just south of Lawrence, Kansas with her husband, bioregional writer Ken Lassman, Shay the dog, two intrepid cats, and young adult children who visit to the delight of all the humans and animals.

Caryn in the News

Caryn’s publications and workshops have been featured in the Boston Herald, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Kansas City Star, Washington Post, Paris Herald, Syracuse Herald-Journal, Writers Weekly, Scholastic, Seventeen, The Jewish Chronicle, and strangely enough, Cosmo Girl. You can see her profiled on the Map of Kansas Literature, Goddard College, Brave Voice,and Kansas Poets.

Colleges: State University of New York at Potsdam; Truman State University, MO.; Osher Institute, University of Kansas; Goddard College, VT.; Pittsburg State University, KS.; Johnson County Community College, KS.; Emporia State University, KS.; Brookdale Community College, N.J.; Garden City Community College, KS.; Hutchinson Community College, KS.; Lebanon Community College, N.H.; Haskell Indian Nations University, KS.; Bethel College, Newton, KS.; Naugatuck Valley Community College, CT.; University of Kansas, KS.